Frequently Asked Questions

This title is slightly misleading as no one actually asks me any questions. However, my blog does come up in a lot of searches, so I thought I’d address some of the most common search terms that bring people here. Yes, this idea is totally stolen from other bloggers.

1. rotting frost giant tactics
I’ve explained this strategy in my post on the subject. If you don’t like my guide, try out the one at Murloc Parliament.

2. residue rendezvous cheat
I was mean when I wrote my post on Residue Rendezvous. I used the word ‘cheat’ without actually talking about the cheat. Why? Because cheating is bad! Do I really need to explain how to cheat it? You reset the encounter (duh). Hunters can feign, mages can invis, warlocks can use their portals to remove them from the area. Get the debuff, then reset. Congratulations, you are now a cheater.

Try just killing the bosses though. You can do it, I believe in you!

3. Icecrown buff
A lot of searches about the Icecrown raid buff bring people here. Here are the main ones:

a) How to turn it on:
You don’t have to do anything to turn the buff on. It will be on as soon as you zone into the instance.

b) How to turn it off:
Speak to Varian or Garrosh in the lobby and tell them you don’t want their stinking buff. It will get turned off.

c) How to turn it back on
You can’t. Don’t turn off the buff unless you are absolutely sure you don’t want it.

d) When will the next level of the buff be available?
I don’t believe it’s been officially stated anywhere (please correct me if I’m wrong), but it looks like the buff goes up the first Tuesday of the month. Edit: The 15% buff went up today (April 27th), so maybe it’s every 4 weeks.

4. unit frames
I like Grid for raid frames, I use it on all my characters whether they are healers, dps or tanks. I like Xperl for my target and my own frames. Here’s my post on setting up unit frames. Other options for frames include Vuhdo, Healbot, PitBull and Shadowed Unit Frames.

5. barkskin ice tomb
If you get targeted by an Ice Tomb on Sindragosa, I find the best time to pop Barkskin is right before you get hit. This will reduce the damage taken by the initial hit (which is significant, especially in phase 3), and will also give you and extra 10 seconds or so of reduced damage from Asphyxiation. You can also use Barkskin once you’re in the tomb, but I like to use it before getting hit.

6. resto druid 4t10
I did a post on how much of my healing the 4 piece bonus did in 25-man raids a while back. On average, the bonus provided 3-4% of my overall healing. At worst, it did less than 2% of my healing (specifically on Rotface and Valithria). At best, it could do 6-7% on fights like Putricide or Blood Queen, but this was not always the case. While I find the bonus underwhelming, I still think it is better than not having the set bonus. The tier gear vs. non-tier gear is almost identical in stats, so you may as well use the bonus. My non-tier piece is the Vestments of Spruce and Fir, which has a nice chunk of haste.

Since I wrote the post on the set bonus, I’ve been doing some 10-man hard mode raids. While logic would dictate that the bonus would not be as good for 10-mans, that’s not what I’m finding. The bonus has been providing even more of my healing in 10-man. On a Blood Queen kill, it got as high as 10.7%. I don’t have as big a sample size when looking at 10-man boss kills, so it’s possible this was a fluke. But so far, the bonus has served me well in 10man hard modes.

7. buffs and debuffs
Raid buffs and debuffs are extremely important for raiding. When building a raid group, having as many buffs as possible will increase dps exponentially. In fact, proper raid buffs and debuffs will usually make more of a difference to a raider’s dps than gear upgrades will.

Here are my posts on raid debuffs and buffs. They have been updated slightly since they were posted.

MMO-Champion has a handy raid comp tool that will tell you if your raid group is missing any important buffs.